Phantasmagoria Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media into the Twenty-first Century

In what is thought to be a secular and rational age, why are so many of us still preoccupied with ideas of 'spirit', 'soul', and the supernatural? Why have angels, ghosts, phantasms, fairies, and zombies continued to exercise power over the imagination ever since the Enlightenment? Marina Warner explores the products of fantasy, bringing vital new insights to our ideas about the supernatural and its relationship with self and society, and probing the metaphors and media that have been the stock in trade of poets, scientists, magicians, and visionaries, including wax and cloud, light and shadow, smoke and mirrors, ether, ectoplasm, and celluloid. Illustrated with eight pages of colour and over forty black-and-white images, Phantasmagoria is packed with apparitions, illusions, and other strange and wondrous experiences. Book jacket.

Marina Warner is Professor of Literature at the University of Essex, an Honorary Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and a Visiting Professor at St. Andrew's University, Scotland. An acclaimed novelist and mythographer, she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2005.